A Wrexham businessman who helped shape how Britain uses postcodes has received the mailing industry’s first Lifetime Achievement Award.
Bob Carter, co-founder of Border Business Systems, was presented with the award by The Strategic Mailing Partnership in recognition of his contribution to postcode technology, address processing and mail sortation.
His decades of work were recognised at The Strategic Mailing Partnership’s awards evening at The Steel Yard in London on 15 October, where he received the top gold honour. More than 300 people from the UK print, mailing and communications sector attended.
The award, introduced this year, recognises an individual whose work has made a sustained and significant contribution to the mailing industry.
Bob’s career started in 1976 at the University of Liverpool, where he helped develop programs linking postcode data with voter and polling station information in Wales.
At the time, postcodes were still relatively new and locating the correct one for an address often meant searching manually through Royal Mail’s extensive Blue Books.
In 1980 he co-founded Border Business Systems, now BBS, with his wife Shirley. They started with two people and a single microcomputer, using the new technology to tackle everyday problems with customer data and mail.
When Royal Mail introduced its national sortation system for discounted business mail, BBS developed Mailsort software that allowed organisations to prepare their mail using a microcomputer.
Bob later helped pioneer postcode lookup technology, the process that allows someone to enter a postcode and select a complete address. BBS technology was also used in work to add postcodes to the nationwide British Gas customer database.
As the postal market changed, Bob developed systems for address processing, data cleansing and mail sortation, and wrote software for some of the earliest Downstream Access operations.
Bob said: “I was very pleased and honoured to receive the award. BBS has never been the work of one person.
“This award also reflects the hard work and ingenuity of many people. My wife Shirley has worked tirelessly alongside me throughout, from building the company with me at the beginning to working on countless mail projects over the years. Her contribution has been enormous.
“I would also like to thank Adam, Rob and Neil, who have worked with me at BBS for many years, and my stepson Matt for all his support. I am very fortunate to have had such good people around me.”
Adam Abram, director of operations at BBS, said: “Bob has never been interested in recognition for its own sake.
“He enjoys solving problems and building technology that makes something work better.
“Many of the processes we now take for granted in address management and mail developed because people such as Bob were prepared to tackle problems that had not been solved before.
“We are incredibly proud to see his contribution recognised by the industry. We are equally proud that he is still part of our day-to-day work, sharing his knowledge and asking how we can improve what we build next.”
At 80, Bob remains actively involved at BBS. He continues to write software, attend technical meetings and contribute to the development of products designed for the modern data and mailing market.
Following the SMP Awards, Bob’s colleagues added a recognition of their own. At the next BBS company meeting, he was named Employee of the Month in celebration of the award and the contribution he continues to make to the business.
BBS remains family-owned and based in Wrexham.
The company now provides address data services, mailing software and managed direct mail campaigns to organisations across the UK.
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